Hear Me Now
by angeltrap
Summary: Dean had never been good at letting go of people he cared about. Castiel was no exception. CastielxDean   Sam, spoilers up to 7x03.
1. Chapter 1

**Title: **Hear Me Now

**Author:** angeltrap

**Rating:** Pg-13/T

**Genre: **Hurt/comfort with a side dish of fluff, humor, and a drop of angst and horror.

**Pairings/characters:** Cas/Dean + Sam

**Word count:** (Ch 1) ~5000

**Warnings:** Language, Dean, my sense of humor. :_D Spoilers up to 7x03

**Disclaimers:** Since you probably already know that I don't own Supernatural, let me just point out that I don't own H. C. Andersen's _Little Mermaid_ or M. G. Lewis's _The Monk_ either, and have shamelessly borrowed and edited parts of them.

**Summary:** Dean had never been good at letting go of people he cared about. Castiel was no exception.

**A/N:**I was so happy and encouraged by your response to my first SPN fic, _Boredom_, that I finally managed to finish one of my older projects. Yay! I'm still desperately shy and insecure about my work (this one particularly confused the hell outta me because I decided to alternate between present tense and past tense – I kept getting them mixed up, so please tell me if I failed to fix any of the slip-ups!), but I really wanted to do something with Cas, preferably with some Cas/Dean, and if I could label it a fix-it fic, even better!

The 'Now' parts take place during the 2-week gap in 7x03 – the rest are scattered all over seasons 5 and 6, I guess.

* * *

><p>Chapter I<p>

* * *

><p><em>Where'd you go? Where's your home?<em>

_How'd you end up all alone?_

_Can you hear me now?_

Hollywood Undead – Hear Me Now

* * *

><p>NOW<p>

-_beep_-

"_... I don't know what I'm supposed to do."_

"_Oh for the – just read the script, dude."_

"_... Right. Uh, this is Castiel. I am currently unable to answer your call because I'm too busy smiting demons and... ganking evil liches -"_

"_- bitches, Cas."_

"_I thought you had misspelled it."_

"_Contrary to general belief, I can spell, o Mighty Heavenly Auto-Correct. Bitch."_

"_I was under the impression that to be a bitch one must have female geni -"_

"_Jesus, Cas. Just finish reading..."_

"_... Ganking evil bitches, some of whom are actually male. If you're Dean, Sam, or Bobby, leave me a message. If you're not, leave me a message and tell me how you got my number."_

_-beep-_

Dean swallowed. Not that he was in the habit of calling dead people just to hear their voices or anything, but even in the light of his earlier emo-fests with Dad and Sam's voice-mails, this probably qualified as a tad bit unhealthy.

"Hey, Cas," he said, throat and lips and voice dry. "It's Dean. Uh... listen, things have been a little crazy after you went swimming, you know, with Sam being all Fight Club and shit, and me being immobilized and locked up with Tyler Durden and the unnamed dude, and my cast is driving me fucking _nuts_, man, I swear I've had this itch in the back of my knee since leaving the hospital, and I'm just about ready to start climbing the walls and eating Rufus's ugly as fuck curtains, and -"

He paused to draw breath because passing out wasn't on his to do list for now, and continued in a slightly softer, marginally less frantic tone.

"- And I guess I just needed someone to talk to, and it's not like you can zap away in the middle of a conversation now, right?" He gave a weak laugh and did not think about how it wasn't like Cas could hear him now, either.

Or reply.

He waited for a moment anyway, just in case.

"Yeah," he murmured after a minute or two had ticked by. "I know, man. Fucked up all the way to freaking Pluto, I know, but hey, it's the Winchester way, right? 'Sides, I bet Pluto's feeling pretty lonely up there. Not even a planet anymore, seriously, what kind of shit is that? You're a planet for hundreds of years and then _bang_, suddenly you're not, just because some douche-bag in a lab coat decided you were too small to be one."

He could almost see Castiel's baffled expression, the spark of curiosity that would make Dean take a comfortable position and launch into a wildly colorful tale of how great an impact Pluto had had on his childhood and how he felt personally insulted by the degrading attitude modern scientist had shown towards his friend and how Pluto would always be a planet to him, oh, the greatest of them all, sigh, swoon, starry eyes, batting lashes, a hand held against his heart.

And then there would be Sam looking amused and annoyed at the same time, scowling and hastening to clarify to their undoubtedly simple angelic friend that the only Pluto that had been present in their childhood had been the plastic dinosaur figurine Sam had named after Mickey Mouse's dog. And then Cas would probably try to prove that he wasn't a complete idiot and mention something like being present at the time of the planet's creation, all casual and shit, and then rush to assure that he definitely agreed with Dean, once a planet, always a planet, right?

But there was only silence where the angel's gravelly voice was supposed to be, and Dean was left to fill it himself.

"Yeah. I guess I'll... call you later. Oh, and Cas – your voice-mail message still sucks. How you managed to screw up my magnificent script I have no idea, but dude, you seriously need a new one."

:::

THEN

"Dean."

Dean supposes it's a sign of how accustomed to the angel's sudden appearances he's become – or perhaps of the five empty shot glasses standing in a pretty little pyramid in front of him – that he doesn't even start at the sudden sound. He makes a small, non-committal noise to show that the angel's been noticed, and keeps staring at the shot glasses. They're not the usual clear ones, they have a nice drawing of a city skyline circling them, and Dean wonders why anyone would use them in a bar where things get broken on a daily basis.

"We've been looking for you for hours. Sam's tearing the town apart." Castiel hesitates, then adds, "I think he almost got himself arrested for accusing the sheriff of, hm, confiscating you. And, uh, for punching him. I managed to convince the sheriff that he was only besides himself because you have diabetes and your insulin shots hadn't disappeared with you."

Now, that gets Dean's attention. Forgetting trying to recognize the city depicted in the glasses he turns to gape at Castiel, mouth falling open in awe. "You pulled a con? Seriously? You? And you were _convincing_?"

Castiel looks uncharacteristically proud – heck, even _smug_ – and Dean remembers the fake badge hanging from the angel's frozen fingers upside down and feels a surge of pride as well.

Then, a little belatedly, he asks, "But wait, hours? Why didn't you just call?"

"We couldn't reach your phone. And, of course, you were hidden from me. You left the car and your bag and didn't say a word about where you were going – we were afraid you'd been abducted."

Dean digs his pocket for his phone and mutters something about how he never gets himself into damsel-in-distress-like situations like that because that's _so_ Sam's area, even if he doesn't always wake up exactly where he falls asleep and okay, sometimes it involves people with sharp objects surrounding him when he wakes up and stuff, but that never counts as getting kidnapped, it's always a part of an elaborate plan to infiltrate the enemy camp.

But he kind of gets what Cas means, because apparently his battery has been dead for God probably doesn't know or care how long, and he's pretty sure that had it been Sam and his phone instead, the local law-enforcement station would have suffered much more casualties than one sore sheriff-jaw.

He starts to apologize, feeling kind of sheepish and guilty all of sudden, caught red-handed in a cookie-jar – wait, that doesn't sound very logical, does it, except if the cookie-jar is really big, which naturally means really big cookies and really big chocolate chips as well – not that Dean likes chocolate chip cookies because chocolate? Girl-eeeeew. Now pie, pie is the dessert of real men, the food of champions, the sustenance of heroes – but sometime during his contemplation on gender and nutritional products Cas has pulled out _his _phone and is now apparently talking to Sam.

"... Just fine. I don't see any cuts or bruises besides the ones from the hunt. No, he doesn't look like he's been beaten for cheating at poker. M-hm. No, no signs of inappropriate use of pool cues, either. What? … Yes, Sam, in all senses of the word. Not even a slap from the bartender, as far as I can tell. U-hum. Yes, fully dressed. _Yes_, fly done. What? No, not sober – he's been sitting at a bar for the last few hours, it would be highly unlikely – no, not _that_ drunk. Sam, please return to the motel now. I'll bring him there so you can inspect him yourself because apparently the word of an angel of the Lord doesn't count as reliable."

Dean pouts, because he still thinks it's unfair that Sam has gotten bigger than him, especially because the kid seems to take that as permission to mother-hen and big-brother over him to his heart's content, but honestly, it's kind of nice, too, to know that he cares. Castiel's kind of nice as well, he decides as the angel hauls him out of the bar to do the zap where no one can see, for someone with a stick so far up his ass it's probably poking at his brains – but then, that probably explains why Cas is sometimes a little slow to catch on Dean's jokes.

"Hey Cas," he blurts out softly as they stagger across the motel room, slightly dazed by how the floor under his feet was pavement just a second before. "She said thanks. Man, t'was weird. Never had anyone thank me for ganking them before. Evil things, I'm tellin' you – into all kinds of crazy shit..."

"Who said thanks?" Castiel asks absently as he helps Dean sit on his bed, then gently pushes him onto his back, apparently knowing that if the ex-missing person isn't horizontal by the time Sam gets here, there will be hell to pay and a long, extensive lecture on treating to an injured friend to be suffered.

Dean blinks up at him, vaguely aware that he's more buzzed than he should be after such an amount of alcohol, but he chalks it up to hitting his head in the hunt earlier that day, the blood-loss that followed (thankfully not from the head, but several other cuts), the exhaustion of having slept very poorly the night before, and – come to think of it, he isn't quite sure if he's eaten anything today. There, all very valid reasons to be a little out of it, and with Cas and Sammy watching over him, it's perfectly okay to be a little confused and tired and tipsy like this. It's only for a little while, anyway.

"The demon," he slurs, and he isn't sure if it's the shots or the head trauma and possible concussion turning his words into Lucky Charms that have spent a little too long floating in milk, but he's confident that his companions will tell him if it's something to worry about. "The demon chick we stabbed today. Went on a full-scale havoc parade, killed things and probably drowned puppies just for kicks before we got her, fought tooth and nail and almost beheaded Sam and chopped me into sushi-sized bits, but then – I guess you two didn't hear it, you were on the other side of the room, but when I killed her, she just looked at me and freaking _smiled,_ and said, 'Thank you.' Talk about freaky."

He can still see the young girl staring at him with pitch-black eyes and a soft, blood-stained smile, Ruby's knife poking out from her ribcage. He doesn't say it, but he thinks that after thanking him – the very moment she died – she sort of turned into herself and added, '_I'm sorry_'.

He gets the feeling that the latter wasn't addressed to him but the poor girl she was riding, but that doesn't fit anything he knows about these things and he's finding it hard to accept.

Castiel, however, is smiling, eerily similar to the gentle smile on the dying demon's face, excluding the blood (for which Dean is pretty happy). "It seemed to me that she was a very young demon. Newly-made. Most demons remember their former lives – perhaps, in her moment of dying, she remembered it vividly enough to be grateful that you stopped her from killing any more innocents."

Dean pouts, because no one should be grateful for being returned to Hell, and – wait, that isn't what Ruby's knife does, is it? Exorcizing the bitches does that. The knife kills them for good. Doesn't it?

Which makes him wonder, "Where do demons go when they die, Cas?" because he knows where they come from, and going back to Hell where human souls are turned into demons to begin with just seems a bit illogical.

The angel blinks, as if he's surprised that Dean doesn't know. Dean thinks of all the demons he's killed, and doesn't feel guilty so much as ashamed that he has never bothered to find out, especially after his own all-too-close shave with demonhood back in Hell. "Well, obviously they can't go to Heaven or Hell because they simply don't have enough of a soul to go anywhere. What remains of their former souls – their heart and mind, you could say – turns into air when they die, Dean. They cease to exist as such and lose all consciousness. I like to think that since there is no final judgment for demons, no Heaven or Hell for them, they repent for their crimes by becoming something that's vital for life."

Dean thinks it sounds beautiful like a fairy tale and just about as credible, but it gives him hope, and in any case he's prevented from answering because suddenly the room is full of worried, angry little brother flailing around and subjecting him to a thorough inspection and enough nagging and griping to last a lifetime.

:::

NOW

The first time it happened, Dean was piling himself a night snack, half-buried in the fridge in an attempt to find anything edible. He'd fallen asleep on_ The Bold and the Beautiful_ (because apparently not even his liability to getting hooked on anything on TV could make him stomach Ridge Forrester, _Jesus_, what a douche), and Sam had either tried to be thoughtful or been too occupied playing chess against his imaginary friend and hadn't poked him awake for dinner.

Then again, perhaps it had been because his gigantor brother had consumed everything edible in the house and had let Dean sleep on purpose, hoping Bobby would arrive with new rations before Dean realized that this was the case.

Not that it mattered one bit when suddenly there was a familiar "Hello, Dean," right behind his back, because whatever he'd managed to scrape together went flying and crashing to the floor along with the plate as he whipped around.

Castiel's voice was sand-paper and whiskey and tortured screams and just like it had always been, except for when it had been different and left windows shattered and Dean's ears bleeding.

"Cas," the hunter whispered, frozen with the kitchen counter against the small of his back, his hands clutching the edge of it for support, and he remembered another meeting in another kitchen in another time and, it seemed, in another world. The angel was eerily familiar and unfamiliar just as he had been back then, and just like then, Dean was mad at him and utterly afraid of him at the same time.

But Castiel just stood there, unspeaking, drenched in the trench coat Dean knew was dry and neatly folded in his duffel, dripping black water, bleeding black blood and weeping black tears, and after a while Dean couldn't handle it anymore.

He closed his eyes and definitely did not sob, and he woke up on his side on the couch, the remote pressed up against his cheek, stomach growling, and very much alone.

:::

THEN

Question: How do mermaids breed?

Answer: No fucking clue, they clone?

Dean has never been all that interested – though he remembers being a curious teenager once, watching _The Little Mermaid_ with a nine-year-old Sammy and wondering if Ariel's boobs meant mermaids had the rest of the usual feminine equipment as well, and if they did, where the Hell did they keep it – but looking at his legs – leg – freaking _fish tail_ – he's suddenly very interested.

Because breeding means sex, and sex Dean has plenty of interest for.

The curse of the water spirit is supposed to last until the next new moon at most – only four days away – and of course it isn't like Dean's gonna dive into the lake to see if they have any underwater taverns where he could attempt to find an interested mermaid, but hey, never hurts to consider all options, right?

To be honest, though, he finds the sudden lack of two legs and what's supposed to be between them pretty unsettling.

"Hey Cas," he says, leaning his head back to look at the angel sitting on the rock behind his back; attempts to take him out of water have failed miserably, and now he's forced to recline in the shallow waters near the shore, fishy parts under the surface and only a naked chest on display for any unfortunate passers-by, so that Castiel can look over him while Sam looks for a place with – God forbid – a bathtub. "How do merfolk have sex?"

Castiel blinks at him, looking slightly outraged but mostly confused. "I'm not familiar with their reproducing habits. In fact, I think that actual merfolk don't have the tail of a fish and are closer to human structure, except for the gills. I would assume they mate much like humans do."

He says _mate_, like animals mate, and Dean supposes that he has enough evidence to conclude that most angels see humans as nothing but animals – and that just leads to a whole bunch of philosophical questions about what actually counts as an animal and so on, and Dean doesn't really want to go there, so he focuses on the funny little flip his insides do around the point where his skin turns into scales at the way the angel pronounces the word.

Castiel seems to take his silence to mean that the answer was not satisfactory, and hastens to evaluate, "But I suppose that if merfolk_ do_ have the tail after all, they probably reproduce much like fish, by shedding their gametes into the surrounding water, with the actual fertilization and growth of the egg taking place outside the -"

"Oh, _gross_, Cas," Dean groans, screws his eyes shut and hits the back of his head against the rock as if it could erase the information from his mind. More flipping happens, but this time it's certainly situated firmly in the stomach department, and Dean has absolutely zero interest in puking in the lake he's going to have to marinate in for God knows how long.

Castiel does the frown-head-tilt combo number five: he's trying to figure out what he did wrong this time.

"Anyways," Dean grumbles in a feeble attempt to change the topic, lifting what should be his legs above the surface, both fascinated and terrified by the way the tail can bend almost bonelessly where his knees and shins and thighs should protest, "if real mermaids don't have the tail, why did the bitch put one on me?"

Not that he's a freaking mermaid, of course. Maybe mermen are fishier than mermaids?

Castiel regards him with a serious expression. "I believe the spirit was feeling a little put off that you wanted to kill her. The spell she flung at you was probably just her being spiteful." He pauses. "She probably thought it extremely humorous," he adds.

"Spirits with a sense of humor are always the worst," Dean mutters and examines the scales gleaming from the rays of the setting sun catching on the water on them. He has gills and he's fucking glittering in the twilight settling snugly around them, and he's looking at four more days without a penis. That can put a man on a somewhat sour mood.

Castiel seems to sense this, and offers an attempt to comfort him: "You are a very pretty color, at least."

Which does nothing to cheer Dean up, because Sam has already pointed out – gleefully – that his scales match his eyes very nicely. He doesn't deny it, though. The fin, pale green and translucent and with shining reflections of the water lapping gently around him dancing on it, is his favorite part, though he'd rather sell the Impala than admit that to anyone.

Apparently his training is finally beginning to settle in Castiel's mind, because after considering it for a moment, the angel makes another attempt to cheer him up, utilizing a technique Dean has taught him only a few weeks ago: distraction.

"Did you know that the mermaid of the original fairy tale was not actually a mermaid?"

Dean tilts his head back again, staring up at the angel, baffled and curious. "What, the chick in _The Little Mermaid_?"

Castiel nods, leaning forward and placing his elbows on his bent knees and looking so very normal and _human _that Dean finds his mouth falling slightly open in amazement. "Yes – the one in the original story, written by a... Mr Andersen, I believe." He tilts his head a little, looks at the glittering golden bridge the setting sun makes on the surface of the water, and says, "She was an angel, originally, though Andersen did not know it – thought the story was his own, not an idea someone whispered in his dreams while he slept."

Dean remembers all the times Cas has communicated to him through dreams and wonders if this is the way angels remember and honor their dead, by coaxing humans into writing down their stories, and feels chilly all of sudden, trying to imagine the ever-present, ancient angel by his side _gone_ and barely remembered in a children's story.

Castiel looks back at him and smiles a little. "The angel Ariel – I suspect _someone_ went and whispered that name to whoever scripted the animated film – was enchanted by the idea of loving a mortal man and having an immortal soul. When she asked, the great Metatron told her that humans only live such a short time because they are allowed eternal life in death, while an angel's lifespan can last eons, but, Heaven-born as they are, they don't have a soul that would go on after their death. Perhaps Andersen's subconscious picked mermaids over angels because he was not ready to accept that angels could die and that when they do, they no longer have a place in Heaven."

Dean's heart gives a painfully loud _thump, thump, thump_, and suddenly he thinks of being electrocuted and doomed to die of a heart attack all those years ago, thinks of his silent acceptance and hope that perhaps, perhaps he'll finally see his mother again, and his tail twitches nervously, splashing water all around, because _damn_, there will always be a place for Cas in _his_ Heaven, it won't be Heaven without him, and if there's no place in Heaven for Cas (like Cas is telling him) or Sam (like everyone else is telling him) then Dean isn't going either, dammit.

"So what happens next?" he asks because he doesn't really know the original story and is pretty sure that the Disney version has a lot less to do with souls and immortality.

The angel's look softens more. "Metatron revealed that Ariel's two desires could be combined: that she could gain a human soul if a human loved her and kissed her, as the last one would transfer a part of the human's soul to her. In reverse, if the angel fell in love with a human and the human chose someone else over her, she would die before her time, soulless, and turn to sea foam, ceasing to exist."

Sea foam? Dean blinks and feels a little dazed, like something is tickling the back of his mind but staying just out of sight. Sure, the case with the comatose girl slaughtering people with her fairy tales had proved to him that most of the things he'd learned to think of as kids' stories had originally been incredibly gruesome and violent, but this was something else.

This was _real._

Realizing that the hunter isn't going to say anything, the angel shrugs, and it looks incredibly strange because Castiel just doesn't do _shrugging_. "The rest of the story goes very much the same as in Andersen's version. The angel took human form to approach a man she had set her eyes on, but later discovered that he was already in love and to be married; on his wedding night her frightened brothers and sisters offered her a way out of her early death, asking her to kill the man with the angel blade she'd left behind and let go of her love for him, so she could return to Heaven with them."

Absurdly, Dean thinks that listening to Cas say this stuff is the biggest, fattest chick-flick moment he's ever encountered even in actual chick-flicks.

Still, he's pretty _damn _sure the Disney Ariel had never been told to butcher Prince Eric in his marriage bed, so chances are that the ending is different from the wedding-on-a-boat one with King Triton doing the gay rainbow thing, too.

"She took the knife," Castiel continues gently, "and went into the room where the man and his bride were sleeping – but in the end, she couldn't stab him, and, I suspect, was rather relieved to know she'd die without a soul, since it meant that she'd cease to exist altogether and never have to suffer again."

Dean feels his heart give a loud _thump thump _again, painfully heavy against his ribcage, and his breath catches because suddenly he realizes that Castiel looks _sad, _and for the first time he remembers how old the angel actually is, wonders if he maybe knew Ariel, debates on asking him and is pulled from his thoughts by _Paranoid_ when Castiel's phone rings. Black Sabbath blares out into the quiet evening and scares the duck family on the other side of the lake into a hasty exit; Dean is still congratulating himself on managing to change the angel's ring tone without being noticed while the angel answers.

Apparently Sam has found a place for Tuna Dean; despite all the Little Mermaid jokes his bitch of a brother has thrown, they all agree that it's probably a bad idea to have Dean wait out the rest of his curse in wild waters where other water spirits and monsters could reside.

"The address? … Good. I'll bring him there."

The angel puts the phone back into his pocket, and Dean leans up, tilting his face towards him and expecting fingertips on his forehead. Instead, there's a splash, and Castiel is standing knee-deep in the water.

"I need to make sure you land in water and not on the floor," he offers as an reply to Dean's questioning look, and then bends and hooks one arm behind the hunter's back, the other under where his knees should be, and picks him up with embarrassingly little effort.

Dean definitely doesn't _squeak_, but he's willing to admit that he's kind of still gaping by the time he finds himself in Castiel's arms in a freaking _spa_.

It doesn't help that Sam's there, too, looking smug and amused at his brother's predicament.

"What the Hell?" the older brother blurts out, gaping at the vast hall around him; chlorine-scented water lapping gently at the edges of at least five different pools under the glass roof arching over them in a huge half-globe, the lighting dim and blueish and reflections of the waves dancing on the white tiles of the floor.

Sam's grin widens. "It just so happens that there was a spa nearby in desperate need of being emptied of all customers for at least four days due to suspected acid leakage to the pools. Conveniently, the staff is not required to take any action besides evacuating themselves, since the big shots in charge of the state's healthcare have put their best and brightest on the job. Officer Young from the healthcare department even had the foresight to turn off the security cameras and cover them with plastic to avoid causing them any damage during investigating the waters." His face settles for a positively gloating smirk, and Dean's pretty sure he taught the kid that one. "Go on, you can tell me how awesome I am."

"You just hijacked a fucking spa for me," Dean said, still kind of shocked but managing to fake a quivering lip and a teary voice. "That's the most romantic thing anyone's ever done for me."

Sam beams and turns to dig something from his bag, already launching into an explanation of possible ways to reverse the curse before four days have passed; Castiel smiles and takes the steps into the kids' pool, which should feel offending, but doesn't because Dean knows it was picked simply because the deep end is deep enough for him to swim around and the shallow end shallow enough to sit there with his companions, and because the water here is warmer than in the rest of the pools.

This time, he's not even all that surprised when the angel doesn't put him down as soon as they're standing in the water, but keeps walking, carrying him, trench coat billowing behind him in the turquoise-tinted water, until Castiel is submerged up to his neck and Dean's weight is almost completely supported by the water, and he _still_ doesn't let go, just cradles the hunter in his arms like he's something light and fragile –

… light and fragile like the kiss still tingling on Dean's lips when the angel finally does let him go, turns and stalks out of the pool again as if nothing out of ordinary has happened.

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><p><em>1) The bit about how fish reproduce is pretty much a copy-paste from wikipedia because heck if I know a thing about fish. :D<em>

_2) H. C. Andersen's Little Mermaid was apparently originally a play (or opera – can't remember), later rewritten as a fairy tale and much later adapted into an animated film by Disney. I remember coming across the story in an old book we had when I was a kid, back when I was around ten, and being both shocked by the suggestion that the mermaid murder her love on his wedding night and extremely intrigued by the soul-subplot. It was only years later, though, that I realized that the soul thing tied to Christianity and Heaven. I'm not sure if it was said in the show the demon souls go to the Purgatory as well (if it was, I chose to deviate from that, sorry :D), but I don't remember them saying anything about what happens to angels after they die, and in wondering about that I immediately thought of this fairy tale and wanted to write about it._

_3) Metatron is in some branches of Christian mythology (eg. Judaic) considered the highest of angels, a place reserved for Michael in the branches that don't have Metatron. He's described as the "heavenly scribe"._


	2. Chapter 2

**Title: **Hear Me Now (2/2)

**Author:** angeltrap

**Rating:** Pg-13/T

**Genre: **Hurt/comfort with a side dish of fluff, humor, and a drop of angst and horror.

**Pairings/characters:** Cas/Dean + Sam

**Word count:** (Ch 2) ~4500

**Warnings:** Language, Dean, my sense of humor. :_D Spoilers up to 7x03. Wincesty jokes, though I'm not sure if this needs a warning – the actual show has way more of this and no warning at all...

**Disclaimers:** Since you probably already know that I don't own Supernatural, let me just point out that I don't own H. C. Andersen's _Little Mermaid_ or M. G. Lewis's _The Monk_ either, and have shamelessly borrowed and edited parts of them.

**Summary:** Dean had never been good at letting go of people he cared about. Castiel was no exception.

**A/N: **Can I consider this a finished multi-chaptered fic? Because I'm really bad at finishing multi-chaptered fics. XD

Seriously, though, I was so happy and thrilled about your encouraging comments on the first part, so thank you once more. ;_; Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll be off to chew on my nails and being terrified that chapter 2 won't be as good...

* * *

><p>Chapter II<p>

:::

NOW

_-beep-_

"_... Ganking evil bitches, some of whom are actually male. If you're Dean, Sam, or Bobby, leave me a message. If you're not, leave me a message and tell me how you got my number."_

_-beep-_

"Hey, Cas? You gotta stop doing that, man. Seriously. I know you have a thing for watching me sleep – still creepy as hell, by the way – but I mean it, I can't sleep when I keep waking up to or, I dunno, dreaming about you looking like some emo kid after getting caught in a rain. Don't wanna wake up to your ugly mug again, okay?"

Silence.

"... Fine, then. Miss your face, happy? Just... just can't see it like that. Not like that."

…

"Yeah. Bye, Cas. Call you later."

:::

The next night, Castiel came and didn't leave before sunrise. His hands were cold on Dean's face, and the hunter could only sit on the couch all through the night, frozen and staring straight through the echo of the angel, willing the apparition to either disappear or to become truly _Castiel_.

He thought he heard whispers, but it was only when the pale morning light started to slowly inch into the cabin and Castiel's pale, cold lips were ghosting against his, that he realized what the words were saying.

_Dean! Dean! Thou art mine – Dean, Dean, I am thine! In my veins while blood shall roll, thou art mine! I am thine! – Thine my body, thine my soul!_

Sam woke up to the sob that managed to slip past his defense. Dean wasn't sure if he'd been awake all night or not, but he knew that he was so damn mad at Castiel's blood for _not_ rolling in his stupid, borrowed veins anymore that it hurt.

:::

THEN

"So... Was it true, that thing about angels turning to sea foam?"

Castiel watches him with great interest as he fills shells with rock salt, careful and precise and thinking that it's pretty therapeutic, actually, like the nostalgia of remembering the lazy Sunday afternoons of his childhood at this or that motel room table, still too young to go with his father, so happy and proud to be able to help him somehow anyway, Dad's half-assed excuses about having too big and clumsy fingers for that still sounding like the most reasonable explanation in the world. His legs are crossed at knees, then at ankles, at knees again, reached out in a stretch, folded under him – and he enjoys the feeling of actually _having_ two legs even more than he hates not being able to find a comfortable position.

"As far as I know," the angel confirms, eyes fixed on every silver shell, every move of Dean's fingers as he pours the salt in, an oddly fascinated look making itself at home on his faze. "Can I try that?"

Dean pauses, glances up and raises his brows before cautiously pushing one shell and the salt bag across the table. Castiel picks the shell up by the rim, delicately and only with the index finger and the thumb, and examines it with curiosity before dropping it on his other palm, watching as it rolls across it and right back onto the table.

The hunter can't help smiling at that.

"I actually checked the story you told me," he says nonchalantly, crossing his knees the other way. "Turns out it didn't end with this chick Ariel taking a swan dive into the sea – or, allegedly, it originally did, but Andersen made changes at the last moment. Apparently, instead of ceasing to exist, Ariel joins some spirits lingering in the air – called the 'daughters of the air', actually – who tell her that even without some douche she can gain herself an immortal human soul – by wandering as a spirit doing good deeds." He pauses. "Wonder why we never seem to come across anything like that..."

Castiel looks up from trying to pour salt from the paper bag into the shell and ends up burying the shell in an avalanche of rock salt. "You did research?" he asks like it doesn't mean anything.

"Yeah," Dean says, because it means a hell lot. "'Daughters of the air', Cas? You just told me a while ago that demons turn into air when they die. Cease to exist, lose all consciousness, just like angels who just turn into sea foam instead. But the air spirits Ariel meets seem pretty conscious to me, and so does she. So... what _really_ happens to angels and demons when they die?"

Head-tilt number three: blank, slightly confused face. Castiel is wondering why Dean finds this important. "I'm not sure. I haven't died yet." He pauses, then adds, "Or at least I seem to have trouble staying dead for long enough to find out. Perhaps we _do_ retain a sort of consciousness after all. Then again, it could be something Andersen added simply because he didn't want his story to end in tragedy."

"Well, yeah," Dean snorts, "'cause if that's true, it means you angels and demons become the best of buddies when you die."

The angel looks vaguely amused as he tries to sweep the extra salt from around the shell in front of him and manages to knock the whole thing over. "It _does_ sound rather comical. Still, I wouldn't necessarily see that as a bad thing. In fact, it seems to me that after death we all unite for a common goal: life. Demons become the air that you breath; angels become the water that sustains you." He glances up, and the corners of his lips twitch a little. "Most of the monsters you hunt go up in flames when you kill them, and while their souls go to the Purgatory, a part of them becomes the fire that warms you. That's also why fires attract so many spirits."

The hunter raises a brow and leans back in his chair, sweeping a hand across his mouth in an unconscious gesture as he thinks about it. Well, sure, if you put it that way...

"So you're saying that basically, everything supernatural eventually becomes a part of the four elements that create and support life?" he asks, practically itching to to boast to his geeky little brother about all this. "That's water, fire and air, though – we're missing a piece here. Where does earth come from, then?"

This time, Castiel's expression is definitely amused. "Where do you think? Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, I believe the words go. Humans are the missing piece, Dean. Together, we are life."

Dean blinks. He'd only wanted to point out the inconsistence in the angel's stories, not get his head stuffed even fuller of this deep shit! "But... we're not supernatural," he tries. "How the hell are we -"

"Nothing," Castiel interrupts him firmly but gently, "in this world is quite as supernatural as a human heart. It's frail and can give in at the slightest pressure, but it can be incredibly strong. It gives you physical strength, it gives you emotions, it points the way when you are confused, it can be broken and fixed in a million different ways, it can believe and doubt, and when it ceases to beat, it passes on its strength to earth, to plants and animals and new humans. Why do you think so many creatures are after it?"

Dean can almost hear Elton John singing, '_It's a circle of liiiiiife, and it moooves us aaaall_' and is about to shatter the all-too solemn and serious and _suffocating_ atmosphere by turning his inner radio station into an outer one by singing it himself, when Cas suddenly looks down at the silver shell and the pile of rock salt and honest to God _pouts._

"It's not as easy as it looks," the angel admits grudgingly, and Dean laughs and pushes thoughts too vast and heavy to be thought to the back of his mind as he reaches out to help his friend.

:::

NOW

Dean had asked Sam to stay up with him – not exactly with a "Stay up with me, Sammy, and hold my hand, I'm scared", it had been more along the lines of "Let's have a Star Wars marathon tonight, dude! Lucy's not invited." but still, he _had_ tried to make sure he wouldn't be alone all night.

And he wasn't, not exactly, but it wasn't Sammy who kept him company for most of the night. At one o'clock, the first Death Star went kaboom and, showing extreme disrespect towards what had once been his favorite scene, Sam fell asleep, going from alert to snoring in a fraction of a second, head falling back against the couch.

Castiel was a black shadow against the white of the TV screen, and, absurdly, Dean thought briefly of asking the deceased angel to sit down and watch the movie with them before the icy hands were on his face again, fingers stroking his jaw, thumb pressing gently at his lower lip before being replaced with another pair of lips.

_Dean! Dean! Thou art mine – Dean, Dean, I am thine! _– came the whispering again, whispering in far too many voices to be just Cas – _In thy veins while blood shall roll, thou art mine! I am thine! –Mine thy body, mine thy soul!_

When dawn reached through the dusty windows of Rufus' cabin, stretching its fingers to tickle the side of Sam's face, Castiel pulled back and was no longer there.

Sam woke up, stretched and turned to look at him, looking shocked and alarmed at seeing the tears on his face. Dean shrugged if off as having just finished watching the last episode, 'Vader turning goody-good to save his son, man, and those ghosts at the end, gets me every time', and knew that he'd have to do something about this because Sam wasn't convinced, and soon there would be questions.

:::

_-beep-_

"_... Dean, Sam, or Bobby, leave me a message. If you're not, leave me a message and tell me how you got my number."_

_-beep-_

"Please, Cas. You can't keep doing this, man, you can't. I can't. 'Sides, you can't just waltz in and recite all that 'thine my body, thine my soul' shit and then waltz right out again – you promise something like that, you get your body and soul here right the fuck now, and I don't even freaking care if you want mine in return, you can have them for all I care. You promise me the moon, you'd better go get it."

A silence to prove how much Dean was _not_ crying.

"... Just don't... don't do this to me, Cas. Please don't."

:::

As far as the hardest decisions Dean Winchester had ever made went, deciding to burn Castiel's coat was among the top five.

It was also in the top five of the things that were the hardest to actually do, because a part of him expected the angel to zap up and demand his coat back, full of indignant fury and assuming that Dean had only attempted to burn it as a silly, immature prank.

Cas remained – stubbornly, if you asked Dean – absent, but Sam caught him, sitting hunched on a log in front of a fire, before he could part with the article of clothing, or even hide the fact that he'd been hugging it to his chest like a safety blanket.

"What's the occasion?" his younger brother asked in the patented Winchester tone of attempting to dig things out of your family members: careless, nonchalant and radiating 'watch me being so utterly uninterested that you'll never guess I'm gonna drag some truths out of you' all around.

Knowing it was too late to hide the coat now, Dean snuggled it closer to his chin, trying to make it look like he was just using it as a sort of pillow between his chin and bent knees. "What do you mean?"

Sam smiled and gestured at the fire he'd built in Rufus's backyard. "The bonfire? Gonna dance around it naked and with flowers in your hair to see your future husband or what?"

Dean blinked, frowned and made the expected gagging sound at that. "Dude, what the hell. Not even real magic, I'm pretty sure the real spell had something to do with spinning around and walking backwards to a well or a lake to see the face of – whatever, I don't even know why I know that," he added hastily when his brother's eyebrows hid under his ridiculous bangs.

"Yeah," Sam commented, apparently not to anything in particular, and took a seat on the log next to him, uninvited but so very welcome. He was quiet for a moment, then pointed out, "Besides, not much sense in doing any sort of magic, white or not, to see the face of your husband, right? We know what he looks like, already."

Dean froze. Had Sam been awake after all? Been awake and very kindly decided to _do nothing_?

But Sam was grinning. "Come on, Deanna. Everyone knows you've been the official desperate housewife of the Winchester household for some twenty-six years. You can whine and bitch about it all you want, but you still bring me the beer when I sit down to watch some soccer. _And_ you get hooked on things like_ Dr Sexy MD_."

Dean flushed and growled and pushed his brother away and took great care to take all that, down to the blush, to an exaggerated degree, because for a moment he'd thought that Sam would say something about Cas. "Silence, man! You're so sleeping on the couch tonight."

Sam gasped, clapping his hands together and looking like Christmas had come early. "But that's where you sleep, honey! Does that mean you're ready to forgive me for my fling with Lucy?"

Okay, _that_ was just unfair. Sam had no business using Dean's favored weapon – turning everything shitty about their lives into a big joke – against his angsty moment!

"Only if you promise not to see him again," he muttered, sticking to his role more to make his little brother think he'd managed to cheer him up than for anything else.

"Well, that's just the thing," Sam said, all seriousness and solemnity. "I've been trying to kick him out – tell him it was all just a mistake and won't happen again, thank you very much, and that I have a desperate and very, very angry wife to take care of, but he just doesn't seem to get the hint. I was wondering if we should call Cas, you know, to take the trash out. He could have you in return."

_Oh, shit._

"That – that's human trafficking, Sam!" Dean stuttered, mentally flailing and reaching for words to get him over his currently hammering heart, icy fingers and sweating forehead. _Samknows samknows samknows_! "That's like – like – like telling the plumber that you're a little short on cash right now but that he's welcome to have a go at m – at your wife, which by the way is very much not me!"

"Oh, Dean," Sam heaved a heavy sigh and threw one of the tree-trunks he called his arms over his brother's shoulders. "I'd never sell you for working plumbing! Now, for getting Lucifer to leave the building – permanently – that I could consider. Though to be honest, I still wouldn't trade you to anyone but Cas. Kind of promised to be sort of a surrogate hubby for you and take care of you in his place while he's gone, I don't think he'd be happy if I auctioned you to anyone else."

Dean's heart was pounding a frantic _what what what_ against the trench coat held to his chest; he noticed a change in Sam's expression, attitude, even posture, as he dropped the game and cut straight to business, reaching out to pry his fingers from around the coat with a soft smile.

"He's coming back, Dean. He'll be wanting his coat back, then," he said, confiscating it so Dean couldn't exercise his pyromaniac tendencies on it. "Besides, it's not like Cas could ever be a regular ghost, anyway – I'm guessing that's what the coat and the bonfire are for. Burning it probably wouldn't even help. We don't know what happened to his body so there would still be that, and in any case, angels don't have souls the same way we do – I don't see how he could stick around as a spirit..."

And suddenly hearing Sam _talk_ about it in such a matter-of-fact way was just way more than Dean could bear.

"He does!" he blurted out before he could stop himself. "He _does_ have a soul, Sam, he does, I gave it to him, or he gave it to himself, I'm not sure, he kissed me and sort of _took_ it, didn't even ask if I wanted to give it to him – you know, it was like in the _Little Mermaid_, not the Disney one, no crab butlers or gay fish kings or anything and I'm sure as hell not a prince anyway, but he – he said it'd only work with a kiss and mutual love and shit, Sam, I didn't even _know_ I loved him, but he's haunting me now so he has to be a ghost so I have to love him, right? Because otherwise he wouldn't have a soul to haunt me with, he'd just be, I don't know, in the angel-demon after-world where – Oh shit, man, I'm sorry, I didn't even tell you about that, he comes to see me every night, just stands there and is creepy and now he's started to kiss and paw at me, too, but honestly I just didn't think it'd be great for the both of us to be seeing dead angels –"

And then Sam's large hands were cradling his face between them, thumbs sealing his lips shut on both sides to silence him, holding his head in place and forcing his frantically moving eyes to settle on Sam's, to focus on one point – the same point on which he'd focused for most of his life.

"Dean," his younger brother said, calm and forceful and gentle, like when he was interrogating a particularly hysterical witness, which Dean supposed he was, in a way, "Dean, I know. I know."

"You know?" Dean asked weakly, and considering that he himself had just spilled most of it it was kind of ridiculous how alarmed he was by this revelation.

Sam grinned a little and took one of his hands off his older brother's face to dig his phone from his pocket. "I know," he said again, punched a few buttons and held the device against Dean's ear.

It was a voice-mail.

"_Hello, Dean._"

If Dean had heard the sob-gasp that escaped from him at that, he would have willed the earth to open and swallow him, right the fuck now. As it was, though, he had better things to do, so, the cell phone pressed against one side of his face and Sam's hand against the other, he focused on solving the mystery.

"_Or Sam, actually, since it's Sam's phone, but as it should be clear by now, the message is for Dean. Sam, I trust you to know when to play this to your brother._

_I'm beginning to realize that I've taken much more than I can carry with this Purgatory deal_", and Dean thought, _no fucking shit, Sherlock_, and wondered if Cas would have gotten the cultural reference,_ "– I should have listened to you, Dean, and I'm sorry I didn't. Not for myself but for the grief my decision caused for you. All the rest I can handle, but the Leviathan... I'm not sure I can even force them out even if this plan to open up Purgatory again and put the creatures back where they belong works. I fear that one moment, I'll come to my senses to see that I've hurt you. That cannot happen._"

The hunter had to draw a deep, shaky breath to rein in his sudden urge to scream and wail at the stupid, self-sacrificing streak that apparently didn't only run in his family by blood but by association as well. Sam's thumb was there to catch the first tear before it could even fall, and Dean was grateful for it, because it would have been the first drop of an ocean had it been allowed to go its way.

"_As it now seems that I won't make it through this alive, I can only leave this message to mitigate the pain and sorrow I know will follow. Dean, it is for the possibility of situations exactly like this that I kissed you back in that spa Sam hijacked for you. Even now I have no way of knowing if it worked, and only my death will tell, since you haven't chosen anyone over me after that – not in that sense – but my heart rests easy on that matter. If you don't love me, I would have no reason to return, anyway, and will be gone for good. If you do... well, I suppose that means I'll be heading to either Heaven or Hell like any other soul. Probably the latter, considering the things I've done recently."_

Dean looked at Sam, who answered his gaze with a sympathetic look, apparently knowing the message by heart, well enough to know what part his older brother was listening to at the moment. The fire painted half of Sam's face orange and the other half black, loaning a fiery glint to his eyes. All of sudden, Dean felt warm, too warm.

Sure, they'd both been mad at Cas, but they'd both also been to Hell, and it wasn't something they'd ever wished on him. It hadn't been a Sunday walk around the park for either of them, but Dean could only imagine the torture a former angel would be put through.

"_This is exactly why I did it, Dean. In the days of the end of the world – I learned to fear death for what it did, for taking me away from those who are important to me. I couldn't risk becoming sea foam and losing what I am, losing you, not without at least trying. Once you cease to exist, you can't come back. I needed a soul – a human soul that would move on after my death, that could always be brought back with enough power. You and Sam have both come back from Hell – both with my help – and I'm confident that I can fight my way out of there as well._

_As I said earlier, I don't think I can control the Leviathan to go peacefully with me. Watch out for their tricks, Dean – they're likely to target you and your brother and Bobby, and I'm afraid they've had access to everything I know and remember of you. I'm sorry. Look after Sam, and let him look after you – I'm told that caring is a two-way deal._"

Dean glared at Sam, because that last bit was so obviously scripted or at least fed to Cas by him that he could practically hear Sam's voice through the angel's. Still, he couldn't help but feel relief; the ghastly Castiel that liked to stare at him not getting any sleep wasn't real, wasn't the real Castiel who actually liked to stare at him _sleeping_, and suddenly it all made sense. Bitches were trying to drive him up the wall and dared to use Cas as their poster-boy! Such insolence!

Sam smiled and nodded towards the phone, and Dean turned his attention back to what was apparently the end of the message.

"_Dean... I must say, I'll be very sad if it turns out you didn't love me after all – though luckily not for long. I'm also counting on my permanent removal from Team Free Will not being too hard for you if you didn't love me. But if you did... if you _do_ love me..._

_If you love me, you have given me a soul of my own. If you love me, I will find my way back. I know now that I am no god, but I will become one if that's what it takes to return. And then I hope you'll let me take you out to, quote, 'smite demons and gank some evil bitches'."_

_-beep-_

"_You have no more new messages."_

Sam lowered the phone from his ear, snapped it shut and hid it in his pocket again, all the while eying his brother for reactions. After a while he seemed to realize that the shiny eyes and hitching breath were the only response he was going to get for now and smiled softly. Dean felt the large palm against his cheek slide to the back of his head, and the next thing he knew he was pulled into a protective, bone-crushing hug, held there in his brothers arms like a frightened child, and moment later he realized that his treacherous fingers had decided to betray how deprived of all friendly human contact he'd felt by tangling themselves into Sam's shirt.

If he was perfectly honest, he couldn't even bring himself to care, because Castiel was not a rotting corpse groping him and trying to freak him out every night, Castiel was a strong, fierce warrior, fighting and smiting his way out of Hell as they were speaking – of course he was, because Dean had absolutely zero doubts about him having gotten a soul of his own – heck, he probably had Dean's as well.

He could hear Sam's grin in his voice, feel it in the arms that encircled him, as his little brother spoke. "See? This is where I get to say, 'told you so'. Accompanied with my patented evil laughter, which was no doubt the biggest reason Lucifer picked me as his stuntman in the first place: Mwahahahaha. Ha." Dean was grabbed by his arms and pushed back so Sam could look him in the eyes. "Seriously, though, you should have told me about the fake Cas trying to creep into your bed, dude, would've taken care of it before. And don't worry – we'll find a way to keep it at bay at least until Cas can drag his ass here and exercise his divine justice on it. Come on, man – let's put the fire out and head to bed. Maybe I'll sleep on top of you to keep the Leviathan from getting to you..."

"Shut up, bitch, I'd be a freaking pancake in five minutes," Dean chuckled, but got up and helped his brother put out the fire anyway. As they turned to head indoors – Bobby was already calling from the window, nagging about how he was never ever going to cook for their ungrateful asses again if they couldn't be bothered to be there when the dinner was ready – Sam swept the trench coat from the log where it had been waiting to be picked up and handed it to his older brother.

Dean was spared having to use Sam as a blanket by draping Castiel's coat over himself instead. He dreamed, undisturbed, of voice-mails and mermaids that night.

Castiel was coming home.

:::

* * *

><p><em>1) Castiel's nocturnal visits and the thine-my-body-thine-my-soul thing are borrowed (with some changes) from the Bleeding Nun episode of M. G. Lewis's The Monk. It struck me as sufficiently creepy and awesome to fit the situation here. :D<em>

_2) Should I have added a spoiler alert on Star Wars? I did pretty much spill everything important that happens in the last movie. XD_

_3) Still kind of waiting for this to happen in the actual show._

_Please tell me what you think!  
><em>


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